I Don't go out for Brunch

29 January 2006

Some Odd Creationist quotes.

Creationists are not exactly my favorite people. How could they be? I am a biologist, and scientist and they represent the antithesis of all that science is. Here are some odd, odd quotes by those who turn to the bible for all things. Creationists are united in their belief that the bible can inform them on every subject. I think these quotes -some taken from the reviews page of Richard Dawkins'excellent book, "The Ancestor's Tale: A pilgrimage to the dawn of Evolution," and the others from interviews found at Media Matters for America (mediamatters.com).-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a detailed and meticulous description of evolution and the history of biological life. Of its type, this is one of the most comprehensive and readable accounts available. Unfortunately Dawkins is operating entirely within the wrong paradigm!

Creation may be contradicted by facts, but facts don't necessarily add up to truth. Evolution itself is flawed on several counts, for example it cannot explain:

1) Why heavy fish, like whales, don't just sink to the bottom of the ocean 2) Why most trees are so much taller than necessary 3) How non-biological animals, like crocodiles and ostriches, came into existence 4) Why sharks haven't grown legs, moved onto land and taken over the world 5) The existence of invisible species that remain undiscovered

So go ahead and read Dawkins' lucid prose in 'The Ancestor's Tale' - but remember there are some occasions when facts are wrong.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Apparently this is a book about the history of humanity and our relationship with our 'animal ancestors'. How it is possible to discuss these matters without invoking Creation I do not know! There is a Good Book on these topics and I think we all know what it is! The Truth is that we came into being after God created Adam and Eve several hundred years ago, and were given dominion over the animals that were created around about the same time. We are not animals we are human beings! If life had been evolving for billions of years then surely even animals like goats and squirrels would have turned into humans by now.

Dawkins presents an objectivist scientific account which is clearly over-reliant on a materialistic conception of life. For example, he argues that 'if we had fewer or more than ten fingers, we'd recognise a different set of numbers as round'. However, it could be the case that early Man decided 10 was a round number and subsequently was given 10 fingers by God.

This lengthy book is just part of the rationalist scientific orthodoxy. For a better read on the origins of life, try the Bible.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------(Judge Roy Moore on Hardball With Chris Matthews)MOORE: There's no scientific evidence of evolution. Evolution is a theory and has been recognized so by many. You have always heard of the missing link, haven't you?MATTHEWS: Right.

MOORE: It is still missing. In other words, they can't explain how male and female came and every species from one atom or one amoeba.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Here is Pat Robertson discussing evolution with his 700 Club cohost.ROBERTSON: You know, what we have got to recognize just there in this case is that the evolutionists worship atheism. I mean, that's their religion. And evolution becomes their religion. It is a matter of religion. So this is an establishment of religion contrary to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. And the fact that somebody comes along and says, "We are not sure that it's accurate, it's a theory and not a fact" -- how can you say it's a fact? You are talking about 10 to 15 billion years ago. Who was there?

TERRY MEEUWSEN (co-host): Scientifically, you would think that the scientific community would rise to the occasion and say, "Absolutely, let's keep an open mind. Let's continue to discover and search."

ROBERTSON: Yeah, well, a lot of scientists are. More and more are. They are saying there are just too many things that can't be explained by evolution. But, I mean, these fanatics, I mean, it is a religion, it is a cult. It is cultish religion, and whenever you start talking about the origins of life, you now get into religious matter, and theirs is just as much religion. The only difference is that even questioning, questioning that -- the ACLU says even if you question our religion, you are guilty of violating the First Amendment. I mean, give me a break.

(Robertson has also recently warned pennsylvannians in the small town of Dover not to turn to God should a disaster befall them. Dover citizens had voted out the the school board that had supported the teaching of intelligent design. "You voted god out of your town." Pat said.)-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------I suppose these don't need much commentary. But the following lines just say so much.

Creation may be contradicted by facts, but facts don't necessarily add up to truth. Evolution itself is flawed on several counts, for example it cannot explain:

1) Why heavy fish, like whales, don't just sink to the bottom of the ocean 2) Why most trees are so much taller than necessary 3) How non-biological animals, like crocodiles and ostriches, came into existence 4) Why sharks haven't grown legs, moved onto land and taken over the world 5) The existence of invisible species that remain undiscovered

I am not sure what exactly a "non-biological animal" is but it doesn't bode well for conversations that might occur between creationists and biologists. And what is that line about "heavy fish, like whales?" There are much more savy defenders of creationism, but I suspect the majority of them are like the person who penned the lines above.

Did they really say that?

I was reading and listening to the latest from my favorite web-site, Media Matters for America (mediamatters.com), and I found myself somewhat shocked by the vast intellectual distances that seem to seperate me from most creationists and deeply fundamentalist religious folk. I suppose I should amend that last to, deeply fundementalist, christian folk. They are the ones I have the most experience with. So I ended up following a series of articles and clips, audio and video detailing the multifareous ways in which Christian Media personalities from Pat Robertson to Janet Parshall and I differ. This whole trek started with a the headline, "Conservatives quick to opine on Brokeback Mountain's "agenda," slow to actually see film." This lead to numerous articles about conservative religious attacks on the movie. These were all fairly odd. They had a range of offensiveness, and I won't waste alot of space here on thier content, except to say none of the people critiqueing the film had seen it. Janet Parshal,as a guest on the Larry King show, said, "I am interested in all the buzz about the film." She went on to say, "After all Larry, I think what we are witnessing is the homosexualization of America." She spoke about gay marriage and civil unions, "pretend family," and she suggested that Matthew Shepard died, at least in part because he was looking for trouble in all the wrong places. She neglected to mention that he had been coaxed out of the bar by two men posing as gay men in a premeditated assault. She also called same sex adoption "state sanctioned child abuse." Larry King was a bit more combative than I have seen him in the past and I must say hats off. He challenged her on the notion that the genesis template is one man, one woman. She didn't defend very well. The patriarchs with more than one wife had lots of trouble was about all she could muster. And in response to the "state sanctioned child abuse" crap, Larry asked her, essentially, if she would commit to saying that same-sex couples were capable of creating a safe environment, and "normal" hetero couples were capable of creating a pretty awful one. Of course she opted to say something like, "foster care laws need to be changed," before ever admitting that there were any circumstances where it might be better to hang out with some gay couple than the hetero alternative. She was one of the least acidic of the highlights at the media matters website. Conservative radio talk-show personality Michael Savage, whose vitriolic rhetorical florishes make me suspect that "he" might really be Anne Coulter in drag, went on about a movie he called, "fudgepack mountain, bareback mountain," and "bareback mounting." Which are all his nick-names for "Brokeback Mountain." I guess he was being clever. He also went on to say that America had "voted," (in box office sales the movie "Hoodwinked" did better than Ang Lee's Western) and that it rejected the degenerate, vile morality of "disconnected, and perverted" Hollywood. Lets ignore the fact that these two films are both, Hollywood studio films shall we, and skip right to his rationale for the conclusion. The movie "Hoodwinked" knocked the pants off of "Brokeback" in terms of box office grosses. Well knocked the pants off is not exactly true. That was the tone Savage used. It made about a million more dollars this weekend (7.38 vs 6.35 which is terrible for an opening weekend by the way). There are several reasons why this happened and I needn't spell them out here. But lets continue to apply Savage's logic to the rest of the Top Ten list for this past weekend (My list is from IMDB.com.). "Brokeback Mountain" earned this weekend, 6.35 million. I think this is a respectable earning for an R-rated romantic drama, of somewhat limited release. "The Chronicles of Narnia" earned only 4.41 million. That is a differnce of thirty-one percent. So, following Savage's logic, Americans prefer gay cowboys much more than allegories about Christ. They also prefer Big Momma's House (28 million) to all things on the silver screen. What does that say about American values? Anything? Nothing? Everything. To Michael Savage I will say this.

We Americans have spoken. We like men in drag more than most things, we like parodies on the classics more than gay cowboys, and we like men in drag, satirism and gay cowboys much more than Jesus, or at least much more than Jesus-lions. At least that is the way we feel this weekend. Check back next weekend, as new releases require a re-assessment.

22 January 2006

Masaaki Hatsumi's Stick Fighting Book: A review.

I practice three martial arts. One I do regularly, the other two just enough to be able to perform effeciently should I ever find myself in a real, though statistically unlikely, dust up. The one I practice regularly has street applications but I am mostly just into the sporting aspects of it. The art is Brazilian Jiu-jitsu (a ground fighting art derived from judo), and I hit the mat two or three times aweek for about 4 to 5 hours at a stretch. Pretty goddamn time consuming. The other arts are not related to ground fighting, and they are, Kickboxing (my version of which has been parred down to a combination of Boxing and Muay Thai Kick-boxing) and Filipino stick fighting. These arts I practice because in the street I will not be able to work my infamous "x-guard," or hold an opponent in kesa gatame for a minute while I try to set up a kimura (this is also called a hammer lock and was used with some success by Beouwulf to tear the arm off of Grendel. I have never ripped anyone's arm off but I have secured a number of submissions with it.) The point is not all of the sporting aspects of Brazilian Jiu-jistsu have immediate street application. But a right cross, a thai low kick and the ability to wield an every day object or walking stick as a deadly weapon are all very efficatious in those situations where heads must be cracked. I picked up Hatsumi's book on the subject of stick fighting because a friend of mine told me it was easily worth the 17.00 bucks it would cost. So on his say so, I gave amazon.com 17.00 bucks and bought a book. Was the book worth it? Yes. Is it the best book on stick fighting there is? I don't think so. But I do think it is easily one of the best books on the stick as a weapon of self-defense there is. This is good because the subtitle and the foreword of the book set instruction in self-defence as its goal. It is not a stick fighting book per se. You may be saying to yourself, self-defense? Fighting? Its all the same isn't it? The answer is a not so simple no. Most martial arts are predicated on the assumption that you and your opponent are in a situation very much like a duel. Most arts are practiced in pairs with opponents facing each other, learning techniques that apply to one on one, hand to hand or weapon to weapon combat scenarios. Such arts truly are about fighting, specifically they are about dueling and the various forms in which dueling can occur. Being a good boxer doesn't mean you will be good at defending yourself in a real "self-defense" scenario. It can mean that. But such transitions typically require some thought to apply what is essentially dueling skill to the random, un-orthodox self-defense situation. Hatsumi's book, Stick Fighting: Techniques of Self-Defense, is not a dueling book. So consequently almost every review of this book I read coming from those who practice Filipino stick fighting have totally hated it. Calling these reviews negative would be something of an understatement. They are wrong of course. And much of that wrongness comes from the fact they misunderstand what they themselves do. They are duelists. To use the stick as an escrimador against an assailant who was accosting them with only their bare hands would not be considered self-defense. It would be oh-so-brutal felonious assault. The other reason for the less than open minded reviews come from the the fact that Hatsumi's style of fighting is more akin to quaterstaff fighting than the filipino hold one end and hit with other approach. There is no view of the world quite so comforting as the one you see when you look through your blinders I guess. Hatsumi's book is in that category of fighting style "X" for self defense. In my opinion this a much neglected category in martial arts literature. It, the book, is much different from the filipino version of stick fighting. It is a decidedly Japanese approach to the use of a stick anywhere from 3/4 of a meter to a meter in length and maybe 3-5.5 centimeters in width as tool of self-defense. The art from which these techniques are derived is Tai-jitsu, and the techinques illustrated in the book survey a wide range of self-defense scenarios. These scenarios appear to assume that your attacker is not a martial artist specialized in some approach to combat, but rather just a thug intent on clumsily, but with determination, inflicting harm on you for some nefarious end. As such the book does what it sets out to do. Did I like every technique I saw? No, not really. But I could say that about nearly every martial arts book I have read. It is easily as good as Leo Giron's book on a different aspect of stick fighting and I loved that book. So I don't like all the techniques in the book. For instance, Hatsumi is very partial to dealing with any grabbing of the chest area by looping the stick over the top of the wrist(s) of the attacker so that it forms a plane across the radial bone(that is the bone in your forearm on the thumbside) and grabbing the other side of the stick with the other hand. If you do this correctly, yourwrists will form an X, the top of which will snuggly bracket the ulna(that is outer bone of the forearm), each hand will be clasping the stick, which forms the top bracket. This will effecetively trap the fist. By pulling down with your arms and bending at the waist, you can generate quite a force which will drive into the wrist where stick and radial bone meet. This is terribly painful. But it would be a rare occasion that I would try it. And Hatsumi also uses this as a counter attack against a punch. Which I would also never do. But I am biased. As Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu stylist I am used to pressure. Furthermore to me all punches should be the quick, powerful, dynamic attacks of boxing. So when I see a technique that requires I do something fairly dexterous and complex to a punch (which remember I am thinking of in terms of a boxing style punch) I am skeptical. But the fact is such techniques are probably quite effective against clumsy unskilled, untrained and un athletic attackers. And lets face it, that is what most of them are. Hatsumi has put together an excellent work on the self-defense aspects of the stick. Anyone wishing to broaden their ability to use the stick as a weapon of self-defense would benefit from picking it up.

About Me

A biologist trapped in the mental health field. I am interested in Evolutionary biology, ecology and conservation. In addition to that, I am an active competitor in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu (I am a purple belt under Marcello Monteiro, a third degree black belt under Ricardo De La Riva). I like hikeing, birdwatching, camping and all things outdoors.